Historical and biographical review of some of the main figures of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine of the Order of Augustinian Recollects from its foundation to the present day.
Bacolod is the capital of Negros Occidental. It had a population of almost 600,000 and became an episcopal see in 1632.
At the portico of its elegant cathedral stand the statues of two prominent Augustinian Recollects: Fernando Cuenca and Mauricio Ferrero, who is deemed the father and builder of Bacolod.
He was born in Arnedo, La Rioja, a Spanish town that had provided no fewer than thirty missionaries for the Philippines. Two bore the surname Ferrero and were relatives: Andrés, who would become provincial and bishop of Jaro, and Mauricio, who was two years his senior.
In 1868, two years after his ordination, Mauricio arrived in the Philippines. His first assignment was to the far-off islands of Calamianes – Agutaya and Culión – where he resided alone for a couple of years.
In 1870, he was assigned to Negros, initially in Valladolid, where he studied the language. In November 1871, he arrived in Bacolod and would stay at the capital for thirty-three years over three periods, the first of which lasted twenty-three years.
In addition to designing the city’s layout, Fray Mauricio constructed what the missionaries did best—or worst—in all the towns: the church, now a cathedral, which took him six years to build (1876-1882); the parish rectory, now the bishop’s palace, in four years (1891-1894); and the cemetery and its mortuary chapel, the schoolhouses, and other structures like the provincial jail, which had the characteristics of a fortress.
In a twist of fate, this jail briefly detained a group of thirty-six Recollect missionaries during the Revolution. Ferrero was under convent arrest and later transferred to Himamaylan in the south. Subsequently, on 6 February 1899, he joined his freed brethren on a steamer to Manila.
He would return to Bacolod in 1902 to stay for another seven years amidst a tense atmosphere and a divided population. On 30 December 1909, he resigned from his post due to old age and retired to Manila, where he died on 8 December 1915 at the age of 72.
